A provider may host a distributed database in a data center on behalf of a client. The distributed database may comprise tables, on which input and output operations may be performed in response to receiving requests from the client. The ability of the provider to perform input and output operations at the rate desired by the client may be restricted by the physical limitations of the underlying hardware, such as central processing unit (“CPU”) speed, network bandwidth and other factors.
In order to provide sufficient capacity for performing the input and output operations, a distributed database may divide tables into partitions. The partitions may be hosted on separate computing nodes, allowing workload to be distributed between the partitions, as well as increasing the reliability and availability of the system. However, it may be difficult to accurately predict the amount of throughput the client will utilize. As a result, an initial set of partitions may not be sufficient to supply capacity for performing input and output operations at the rate requested by the client.